3 Fundamentals of press design

4 Metal Forming Handbook
major strategic benefits by increasing “local content” and so ensuring
an improved market position.
The North and South American markets are supplied locally. The
NAFTA area is coordinated by Schuler Inc. in Ohio, while South America’s
common market, the Mercosul, is supervised from Brazil. The high
standard of quality achieved by the SCHULER plant in Brazil has opened
up even the most demanding markets.
In the growing market of China, the SCHULER Group runs two joint
venture corporations in cooperation with Chinese partners for the manufacture
of mechanical presses and hydraulic presses.
Today, we stand on the threshold to a new millennium marked by
increasing market globalisation and rapidly changing organizational
and producing structures. Under these rapidly changing conditions, it
is SCHULER’s workforce which remains the single most important determining
factor between success and failure. The technological orientation
of the staff provides the innovative impetus which will secure the
company’s development as it moves into the 21st century.
This Metal Forming Handbook reflects the technical competence, the
rich source of ideas and the creativity of the SCHULER Group’s workforce.
The book takes an in-depth look at the pioneering stage of development
reached by today’s presses and forming lines, and at related production
processes, with particular emphasis on the development of control
engineering and automation. Developments in the classical fields of
design, mechanical engineering, dynamics and hydraulics are now
being influenced to an ever greater degree by more recently developed
technologies such as CAD, CAM, CIM, mechatronics, process simulation
and computer-aided measurement and process control technology.
In today’s environment, the main objective of achieving enhanced
product quality and productivity is coupled with lower investment and
operating costs. In addition, questions of reliability, uptime, accident
prevention, process accounting, economical use of resources and environmental
conservation play also a central role.
In view of the fundamental importance of metal forming technology
today, this Handbook offers the reader a reference work whose usefulness
stretches to practically every branch of industry. The book provides
an in-depth analysis of most of the important manufacturing technologies
as a system comprising the three elements: process, production
line and product.
Metal Forming Handbook /Schuler (c) Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1998